From the Magazine

On The Road With Arafat

When Yasser Arafat gave T.D. Allman ten minutes to scramble aboard his private jet, he refused to say where they were going. Forty hours and four countries later, it was clear to Allman that the real journey had been through the secret workings of Arafat’s world.

For someone who is constantly being "protected" by other people's soldiers, packing a piece is prudent. Here, Arafat takes back his gun as he leaves the P.L.O. representative's residence in La Marsa, near Tunis.

Photograph by Abbas.

“Now!” said the voice. “Hurry! Bring a valise. He is waiting.” The ringing phone roused me from my first deep sleep in three days. “But—” I started to explain. “No,” said the voice. “Don’t bathe. Don’t shave. Run! The plane takes off in ten minutes.”

“The call will come when you least expect it,” I’d been warned. And now, when I did least expect it, in the space of three and a half minutes I was showering, shaving, throwing clothes on my undried body, throwing more clothes into a little red overnight bag; I was running out of the hotel room, down the hall to the elevator, and, when after ten seconds the elevator didn’t come, running down the five flights of stairs and across the lobby of the Tunis Hilton and jumping, without looking, into the unmarked sedan which waited, engine idling, with the door open.

“Four and a half minutes gone!” exclaimed the same voice, which then spoke in Arabic to the driver. Instantly, we were careening down the broad avenue leading to Tunis-Carthage Airport.

At the main terminal the car veered left and slammed to a stop in front of a darkened building. “Give him your passport!” the voice said as a uniformed official came toward us. Had I remembered to bring my passport? It took fifteen excruciating seconds to find it.

“Why no shirt and tie?” the voice now demanded. In my haste, I realized, I’d thrown my suit jacket on over a T-shirt. “You did bring a shirt and tie?” I nodded.

“You have one minute!” And now I was buttoning the shirt and knotting the tie while simultaneously running across the tarmac toward the plane with its jet engines revving—bounding up the steps into the tiny Falcon 20 executive jet, hearing the door slam shut, feeling the accelerating engines press me against the back of the seat, seat belt still unfastened, as the plane soared off into the dark North African sky.

Nine minutes and fifty seconds after the call that precipitated this mad dash I looked up and into the eyes of one of the world’s most controversial faces.

“Ah, my American hostage!” said Yasser Arafat. He sat twenty inches away, his knees touching mine, in the seat facing mine. “Yes! We are kidnapping you! You are my hostage, and I will not release you until President Bush recognizes our Palestinian independence.”

The seven other people in the tiny cabin all burst into laughter. Several of them carried guns, including Arafat, though I could tell his gun was unloaded. He had emptied the bullets from his Smith & Wesson revolver onto the narrow table between our two seats, then neatly arranged the bullets in the little circular depression on his side of the table—the place where, normally, you’d put a cup of coffee or glass of water.

Arafat turned to an aide and said, “Should we ask for a ransom too?”

More laughter. Voices saying, “Welcome!” in English and Arabic.

Then Yasser Arafat peeled me a tangerine. He divided the tangerine into sections, and handed them to me one by one. “Eat,” he said. “You will need your strength before I release you.” The plane was too tiny to carry a stewardess, so the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization took over: “Tea or coffee?”

Arafat was dressed exactly as you see him in the newspapers. But up close I could tell that he is by no means as indifferent to his appearance as photos make him seem. His uniform was neatly pressed; his boots—leisure-style, not military boots, which zipped up the side—were highly polished. As for the scraggly, unshaven look, the reason for that was instantly evident. Arafat in fact wears a full beard. But it is black in the front and white on the sides and that contrast, in photographs and on TV, is what makes him look unshaven.

Contrary to what many suppose, almost no one else in the P.L.O. dresses the way he does. Everyone else on the plane wore Western clothing: some had on Givenchy suits and Paco Rabanne ties. So why does Arafat run around in such a curious getup?

“I like to dress the Arafat way!” he exclaimed when I asked him. Arafat clearly has a flair for dramatizing himself and enjoys doing it. But as we traveled, it became clear his trademark clothes had other advantages. They made him instantly recognizable in crowds. They made him look taller, and concealed the fact that under his checked head scarf—his kaffiyeh—he is completely bald except for a fringe of graying black hair in the back. This costume quite successfully transformed the short, stocky, middle-aged man who sat opposite me into the Yasser Arafat that—whether they hate him or love him—no one in the world can ignore. But that wasn’t the only utility.

For everyone else on the plane, suit jackets turned into straitjackets and ties into nooses as the hours turned into days and everyone developed five o’clock shadows. Arafat, however, looked just as comfortable, and presentable, as he had when we’d started.

“Well, why don’t you at least shave, Mr. Chairman?” I later asked. “When people in America heard I was going to meet you, every one of them asked the same question. And it wasn’t about terrorism or Israel. They asked why you don’t shave.”

“O.K.,” he answered, “I will explain why. To save time. I haven’t fifteen minutes a day to lose. Also, in our area of the world this is not something bad, to have your beard. Also, how can I shave in the midst of guerrilla warfare? On battlefields we have no facilities for shaving, and that was why I first grew my beard. So tell them please: it would be very difficult for me to waste 15 minutes shaving, because I would lose 450 minutes a month—seven and a half hours! Too much, because I have no time now as it is!”

By the time I had a chance to look out the airplane window, the city of Tunis had disappeared. Outside was total darkness.

“Mr. Chairman,” I said as I sipped my coffee, “where are you taking me?”

“That is my secret,” Arafat answered.

I took out a notebook.

“Later,” Arafat said. “First I must work. Then I will show you one of the tricks of my trade.”

Without looking around, or saying anything, Arafat thrust his right arm outward and backward into the narrow aisle of the airplane. A plastic folder containing a thick sheaf of documents materialized in his outstretched hand. Arafat put the folder on the table next to the bullets and my cup of coffee, pulled a red felt-tip pen from the pocket on the upper left sleeve of his uniform, and began slicing through the documents—reading, digesting, then minuting each one.

As he completed each notation, Arafat’s arm would fly out into the aisle again, and, again without a word being said, an aide would take the annotated document and put it into another folder.

“Files! Files! Files! These files never finish,” Arafat said. “Though I am not a chief of state, I must work twice as hard as one because I have to both administer a bureaucracy and run a revolution.” In quick succession, he did the Lebanon file, the diplomatic file, the file on the intifada—the current civilian uprising in the territories occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. How did all these files get here?

“Satellite,” said Arafat. “Modem. Facsimile. Every developed technology. Do you see that carton over there?” He pointed to a cardboard box.

“That is the not-so-secret fax, and do you see that aluminum suitcase?” I nodded. “That is the very secret fax.”

In twenty minutes, Arafat completed work on a pile of papers more than an inch thick. Then the chairman of the P.L.O. pulled off his kaffiyeh and massaged the top of his head. He rubbed his beard and stretched.

“I am very proud of our communications system,” he said. “It costs a lot of money. The Sharp Corporation of Japan says the P.L.O. is its best customer, but every dollar is worth it. We can be in touch with any of our diplomatic missions anywhere in less than half an hour. And when there’s fighting, we can send commands to our troops in battle with only a five-minute delay.”

“You command troops by fax?”

“No, voice links are better. The key thing,” Arafat went on, “when fighting a battle by wireless is, once you set the strategy, don’t interfere. Leave tactics to your commanders on the ground. But you must also be maintaining constant spiritual contact, so they know you’re always there, ready to give them advice and orders whenever they need them.”

It was past ten P.M. Fatigue and tobacco smoke filled the cabin. “What’s that trick of the trade you mentioned?” I asked.

“Sleep!” Arafat answered. “If I can get an hour’s sleep now, I can turn one day into two days. I can put in another full day’s work when we reach our destination.”

He stood up, walked to the back of the cabin, and pulled off his boots. He took off his olive-green military shirt and trousers, and handed them to an aide. The aide handed him back a blue jogging suit, which Arafat put on in place of pajamas. He lay down and the aide covered him with a fluffy tan-and-yellow wool-and-polyester blanket.

Yasser Arafat pulled the blanket over his head, and Hani Hassan, one of his chief political advisers, took the seat opposite mine. Across the aisle sat Abu Mazin, another member of the P.L.O. executive committee, and one of Arafat’s chief foreign-policy advisers. Facing him sat Dr. Suleiman Shurafa, a member of the revolutionary council of al-Fatah—the Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine—which Arafat and others founded in the late 1950s and which, thirty years later, is the single largest and most influential organization in the P.L.O.

From the watch on Abu Mazin’s left wrist I could see it was still less than forty minutes since the phone had rung in my hotel room. Though I had no inkling of it then, in the next forty hours we would fly 3,500 miles. We would find ourselves in four countries, one of them twice. Yasser Arafat would lunch with a king and sup with a president; he would inspect three honor guards and ride in five motorcades. He would dictate letters to chiefs of state, and send instructions to subordinates inside Israel. He would decide where and how $25 million would be spent—and also explain to me his dietary habits, which are eccentric, to say the least.

Yasser Arafat has always made himself available for interviews, but lately he has opened himself and his organization up to more intense scrutiny than ever before. Why should he permit a reporter to question him for hours, and shadow him for days?

“Peace!” exclaimed Arafat many hours later when I asked him that question. “I am challenging Israel to peace!”

“Why should they believe you?” I asked.

“I do not ask them to believe me,’ he answered. “I ask them to test me.”

I’m not the only one the chairman of the P.L.O. has “hijacked” lately. A very short time later, the United States, metaphorically speaking, also dashed onboard and sat down face-to-face with Yasser Arafat.

Within days of denouncing him as an “accessory” to terrorism and barring him from the U.S., outgoing secretary of state George Shultz, with the full support of President Reagan and George Bush, announced that the “United States is prepared for a substantive dialogue with P.L.O. representatives.”

The decision to talk with Arafat made headlines. But the small print in the U.S. statement made history. For, in explaining the move, Shultz asserted exactly what Arafat has been saying for decades: “If you’re going to get to a peaceful settlement in the Middle East, you have to include Palestinians in the process from the beginning and at the end,” Shultz declared. The U.S.-P.L.O. connection, he emphasized, would not be an end in itself, but only a “step toward the beginning of direct negotiations between the parties”—Israel and the P.L.O. Furthermore, said Shultz, such “direct negotiations. . .alone can lead to such a peace.”

In a White House statement formally authorizing the decision, President Reagan went further—incomparably, unimaginably further—than any U.S. president had ever gone in dealing with Arafat and the P.L.O. Pointing out that the P.L.O. had “recognized Israel’s right to exist, and renounced terrorism,” Reagan praised “the serious evolution of Palestinian thinking toward realistic and pragmatic positions on key issues” of Middle East peace.

Not only was President Reagan sounding like a representative of the P.L.O.—indeed using many of the same words Arafat did on the plane. Over in Geneva, where a special U.N. session had convened to hear him speak, Yasser Arafat was talking like a White House spokesman.

“Come, let us make peace,” he urged the Israelis.

“We totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism,” Arafat re-emphasized at a tumultuous press conference the next day.

Not that he did this with State Department decorum. “Do you want me to striptease?” Arafat exclaimed when reporters kept pressing him. “It would be unseemly. Enough is enough.”

Not even the laughter could drown out the significance of what had happened. By persuading the P.L.O. to formally recognize Israel’s right to exist, Arafat had engineered one of the most astonishing transformations in modern Middle East history. He had turned himself from a pariah, as far as many Americans are concerned, into a world leader. And he had transformed the P.L.O. from a terrorist organization, according to official U.S. terminology, into what the United States itself now officially recognized as a legitimate partner in the search for peace.

There was unnoticed symmetry in the new stamp of approval Secretary of State Shultz conferred on Arafat. For if it weren’t for the U.S. State Department, Yasser Arafat might never have become P.L.O. chairman. He might today be a U.S. citizen working for a Houston oil company.

According to many, Arafat, the very embodiment of Palestinian nationalism, was actually born in Egypt. His father was a successful Palestinian merchant with businesses in both Jerusalem and Cairo, and certainly Arafat speaks Arabic with a strong Egyptian accent, especially when he is excited or angry. Yet others say he was born Jerusalem, and he himself sometimes states he was born in what is now the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.

It is known that Arafat was admitted to a university in Texas in 1949, at age nineteen. But his application for a U.S. student visa was mired in red tape. “For several months,” Arafat later told his British biographer Alan Hart, “I was waiting only to hear that I had been granted a visa.”

By the time the bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom finally finished their paperwork, Arafat had not only changed his mind; he had undergone a psychological transformation that would change his whole life and the whole history of the Middle East. A simple juxtaposition of dates explains the trauma. In 1948, the year the state of Israel was established, Arafat was eighteen years old. This ardent young Palestinian nationalist had fought briefly and futilely in the first Arab-Israeli war, then helplessly watched as even the name of his country vanished from the map.

The skinny, short teenager, who even then was considered physically ugly by fellow students, and who began to bald when he was still very young, was in the grip of “total despair,” as Arafat himself describes it. “Then, while I was waiting for my American visa, I began to analyze the whole situation. I saw a new way forward and I said to myself, No, I will not leave.” In a burst of frenetic energy that, forty years later, has not ebbed, Arafat plunged into engineering studies at a Cairo university, and quickly made himself the local version of a B.M.O.C.

Arafat’s first big triumph came when he was elected president of the Union of Palestinian Students. He seems to have won and held that office for exactly the same reason he later won and held the chairmanship of the P.L.O. This student organizer simply out-organized—and outworked, out-talked, and outmaneuvered—everyone else. There was another similarity to the future. Arafat quickly transformed the student group, as he later did the P.L.O., from a debating society into a diverse umbrella organization engaged in activities ranging from winning scholarships for its members to giving them military training.

By the time he graduated, Arafat already had made the second great strategic decision of his career. Before the political and military struggle could begin, he had come to realize, he had to create a financial base for himself and the nationalist movement he dreamed of launching. So after earning his engineering degree, he migrated to Kuwait and made a fortune there in the construction business. The first great Arab oil boom was beginning, and there were immense profits to be made in building everything from freeways to air-conditioned shopping centers.

While making money, he was also making political contacts. It was during those days that the high-flying young millionaire forged the worldwide network of close friendships with likeminded Palestinian exiles that provides the senior P.L.O. leadership today. Not all the money, however, was earmarked for the cause. While he was in the construction business, Arafat collected American gas-guzzlers, including a Thunderbird, and was notorious for driving too fast. He also vacationed at expensive European resorts.

Yet his growing riches never deflected Arafat from the goal he had set for himself—even though, to almost all Palestinians, that objective seemed impossible.

“My goal,” he told me, “was, first, to unite all Palestinians in the struggle for a homeland and then, second, get that homeland.”

When he decided he had enough money, this wealthy young bachelor sold his business, climbed into a Volkswagen Beetle, and drove more than a thousand miles across the desert to the very borders of Israel. Simultaneously he and other wealthy young Palestinians founded Fatah. It may have been the only occasion in history when such an affluent group clubbed together to start a national war of liberation.

As the recent terrorist bombing of a Pan Am airliner—suspected to be the work of anti-Arafat Palestinian extremists—shows, the struggle has always been against Arab as well as Israeli enemies. Fatah’s very first battle death occurred when Jordanian troops ambushed a patrol. Arafat has never seen the inside of an Israeli prison, but in those early years he was jailed—and sometimes tortured—in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. In the decades since, many more of Arafat’s fedayeen have been killed by Arab troops than by Israelis—and it was Syria, not Israel, that in late 1983 came closest to actually killing Arafat and destroying the P.L.O.

But this attempt produced the same results as had both Black September 1970 and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

“We will rise like the phoenix from the ashes,” Arafat proclaimed as he and his battle-scarred followers retreated once again—this time to Tunis—to begin what, with the recent events in Washington and Geneva, has turned into the most astonishing chapter in the Arafat story yet.

As chairman of the P.L.O., Yasser Arafat controls an annual budget of more than $200 million, yet he refuses to accept a salary. Jets, ships, palaces, and secret bank accounts are at his disposal. But Arafat seems genuinely indifferent to pomp, or even basic human comfort. Even when he fleetingly comes to rest—in heavily guarded compounds in Tunis, Baghdad, and Aden—Arafat works, eats, and sleeps in quarters no more comfortable than, and just as devoid of the personal touch as, an American cut-rate motel.

During all the hours I spent with him, there was only one special “privilege” Arafat enjoyed which the others did not. Whenever he wished to sleep, others made room for him to stretch out—even though this meant they had to sit on suitcases or lie down on the floor of the plane.

There is no bric-a-brac in Arafat’s life. Other than a few changes of uniform and his revolver, he has almost no personal possessions, except for toiletry items and an expensive watch.

“It’s a Rolex,” he told me when I asked him, “and works well.” Then he laughed and said, “But I don’t want to do propaganda for them.”

By “propaganda,” Arafat meant “advertising.” He speaks in a highly accented English—which he learned while studying in Cairo—with a fearlessness that terrorizes his media advisers, and habitually disregards their warnings that his imperfect English contributes to his bad image in the United States.

Arafat is also a maverick in the way he operates. For days at a time, even fellow members of the P.L.O. executive committee have no idea where he is or what he is doing.

“Why?” said Abu Mazin. “Unpredictability is how he stays alive. You can’t kill a man if you never know exactly where to find him.”

When it comes to deciding where to go, Yasser Arafat’s world is divided into One-Week Countries, Three-Hour Countries, and No-Wait Countries—according to how much time his hosts require to prepare for his arrival. Why no One-Day Countries?

“In terms of safety,” Hani Hassan added, “a day’s advance notice is as dangerous as a week. If it’s known twelve hours in advance where he will be, the only way to protect him is to mass the troops.”

At the Palestine National Council session in Algeria, the troops were massed. Thousands of soldiers and dozens of anti-aircraft batteries guarded the seaside conference hall. Tanks lined the beach and a gunboat hovered offshore in case there was an amphibious assault. Yet security during the trip I took with him was astonishingly light, precisely because no one except Arafat knew where we were going, and when.

Still, there is one precaution that Arafat always takes. I found out about it by counting noses.

“There are twelve people on this airplane,” I said to him. “You and the three other P.L.O. leaders, your secretary, the bodyguard, your personal photographer, the three-man flight crew, and me adds up to eleven.”

I gestured to the final passenger, a beefy fellow in his mid-thirties, with a Browning semi-automatic on his hip. “What does the twelfth man do?”

“Excellent question!” Arafat said to me. And to him, “Please explain.”

“I am the chairman’s secret pilot,” he said. The door connecting the cabin with the cockpit was open. He lifted his right hand, which had been resting casually on his gun, and gestured toward the glimmering dials and the flight crew manning them.

“If any pilot tries to divert the chairman from his destination.” he said, “if they try to turn the plane to the right or left, I take over the cockpit and make sure the chairman goes straight ahead to where he wants to go.”

“Where did you learn to fly?”

“In many countries. Even America.”

“U.S. Air Force training?”

“That is secret.”

“What’s your name?”

“Many Israelis and Arabs would pay very much money to know that,” he replied.

This jet was a charter, manned by a civilian Tunisian crew. But Arafat frequently is lent aircraft by various “friendly” governments. No doubt more than one espionage agency has considered what a supreme coup it would be to deliver Yasser Arafat up to one or another of his enemies for the right political, military, or financial price.

“But what if you were hijacked?” I asked. “What if you were forced down in Israel?”

“It would depend on the reception committee,” interjected Abu Mazin. “Maybe we’d start the peace conference right there and then. Maybe we would get our Palestinian state a little sooner.”

“And if the reception wasn’t friendly?”

“Look back there,” said Arafat. The back of the plane was stacked with various crates and cartons. They even filled the lavatory. “This plane isn’t so heavy because of my beautiful clothes,” Arafat went on. ”We carry sufficient weapons to defend ourselves wherever we go.”

“Can you tell me what kind of weapons?”

“Sorry. No,” said Arafat. “But I can tell you I will never, under any circumstances, be taken alive.” It was a curious sensation—to realize that this plane where we all were was, among other things, a flying bomb.

Arafat started arranging his scarf, making sure the bottom end of it was anchored to the button on the front pocket of his shirt. He started picking up his bullets and putting them back in his revolver—the sure signal, I would learn, that we were about to land somewhere. He gestured out the window and said, “Do you see that city down there?”

I nodded in surprise. Two hours and forty minutes after leaving Tunis, I had completely forgotten that I had no idea where we were going.

“That is Fès, Morocco,” said Arafat. “In a few minutes we will all be the guests of His Majesty, King Hassan II.”

“Fès!” I exclaimed. “Mr. Chairman, I’ve always dreamed of going there. They say the Old City is fascinating.”

In a very few hours, I would be sorry I’d told him that.

The red carpet was fifty yards long. It stretched all the way across the tarmac to the V.I.P. lounge of the Fès airport, where members of the royal court waited to salute the chairman of the P.L.O. and felicitate him on his declaration of Palestinian independence.

Flanking the red carpet were twenty-eight Moroccan soldiers, fourteen on each side. All were over six feet tall; each wore a formal dress uniform, including a flowing cape and towering, turbanlike headdress. Every one of these no-nonsense fellows also held aloft a gleaming silver sword.

As I watched Arafat inspecting the honor guard, for the first time I appreciated that his habit of reloading his revolver every time he arrived someplace was no affectation. Indira Gandhi had been killed by her own guards. Anwar Sadat was murdered while inspecting troops. For someone who is constantly being “protected” by other people’s soldiers, packing a piece is only prudent. It was the middle of the night, but inside the reception lounge, TV lights were glinting off crystal chandeliers. White-coated majordomos were passing large silver trays of elaborate Oriental confections while others poured coffee and Moroccan mint tea into Sevres demitasses from fluted, engraved urns.

There was a reason for these courtesies. The Moroccans were examining the Palestinians’ passports, though of course they weren’t Palestinian passports. Even leaders of the P.L.O. must travel with the passports of countries that are not their own. In the stack of travel documents Arafat’s secretary carried from the plane were the passports of Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia, South Yemen, and other nations.

“It’s hard for people who aren’t stateless to understand why we want a state of our own so much,” Hani Hassan remarked later. “If we do get our state, millions of Palestinians won’t come pouring back. Most members of the Palestinian diaspora, like most members of the Jewish diaspora, will go on living right where they are. But I would like to travel on a Palestinian passport before I die. If we had our own passports, we wouldn’t have to depend on the whims of foreign governments for the right to travel.”

“Does even the chairman have to carry a foreign passport?” I asked.

“No,” said Hassan. “He refuses. All he uses is his P.L.O. identity card, though he could have dozens of passports if he wanted. He was forced to use a foreign passport once, though, when he addressed the U.N. in 1974. The U.S. government demanded it.”

“Where will we be staying, Mr. Chairman?” I asked Arafat as the convoy sped out of the airport.

“I never know in advance where I’m sleeping,” he answered.

Our destination turned out to be a kind of mini-palace annexed to the Hôtel de Fès. On either side of the private entrance flew Palestinian and Moroccan flags. Inside, more waiters offered us more tea and coffee, and an official gave us room keys. When the luggage arrived, aides unpacked the fax machines and took them into a side room. As soon as they were connected, they started spewing out new files. I picked up my little red overnight bag and headed toward my room.

“You don’t want to miss your dinner, do you?” said Arafat, and steered me into a private dining room. It was exactly two A.M., and sitting around a large, damask-covered banquet table, on gilt Louis XV—style chairs, was everyone who had been on the plane, along with several Moroccan officials.

Two A.M. very slowly became three A.M., then 3:15. Arafat was still working—planning the next day’s audience with the king with the Moroccans and his fellow leaders. It was past 3:30 when the dinner party broke up.

Arafat stretched. “No official appointments until noon, when we lunch with His Majesty,” he said.

“Except for you!” interjected one of the Moroccans.

“Me?” I asked.

“Yes. We’ve arranged it all. Chairman Arafat has informed us of your dream of visiting the Old City of Fès, and I am happy to tell you that tomorrow morning at eight your dream will come true. Of course, you will only have a few hours. But we will show you everything.”

I was too appalled by the realization that, in less than four hours, I would be awake again to say anything except “This time last night I could not possibly have imagined I would be where I am right now.”

“And,” broke in Yasser Arafat, “you cannot possibly imagine right now where you will be this time tomorrow night.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke.

During my tour the next morning, I happened upon an example of Moroccan handicraft that seemed to fit the situation. It was a large glass-framed piece of embroidery, gold thread on black velvet. In French, the gold embroidery spelled out the following words: “It Is Only Through Brotherhood That We Can Save Freedom.”

As the plane took off from Fès, it was clear that Arafat was elated. He immediately changed into his blue jogging suit, and replaced his scarf with a visored military cap. Then he, Abu Mazin, Hani Hassan, and Dr. Shurafa went to the back of the plane for a short, animated discussion.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Morocco already gives us much help,” said Hani Hassan. “But in honor of our independence declaration, His Majesty graciously gave us an additional gift today of $25 million.”

“And so we were deciding how to spend it,” added Dr. Shurafa. “You see, the Moroccan currency is not a convertible currency like the dollar, so we will receive the additional $25 million in the form of various Moroccan products—food, clothing, other supplies we select.”

“What will you do with it?”

“All the materials will go straight to the West Bank and Gaza, to help the intifada,” said Arafat.

Arafat started slicing through his files again. When he reached one paper, he laughed. But when he saw my quizzical look, all he said was: “It is nothing.”

“Go ahead, tell him,” said Abu Mazin, and when Arafat still said nothing, Abu Mazin took the paper from him and showed it to me. It was a proclamation issued by a renegade Palestinian group.

“It says the Zionist agent and Israeli spy Yasser Arafat is to be tried for treason and other crimes against the Palestinian people,” he explained.

“Who will conduct the trial?”

“Oh, some people who do not understand history,” said Arafat. “It is nothing.”

A while later, Arafat handed another document across the table and said, “Now, look at this! You will find this interesting!”

It was difficult to tell what it was. It looked like an old piece of tissue paper, but there was tiny scribbling all over it.

“A letter to the chairman from a Palestinian in an Israeli prison,” said Hani Hassan.

Arafat looked very pleased, but his engineer’s mind was still at work. “I am thinking of all the different hands, all the different secret routes,” he said, “this little piece of paper had to go through to get from that prison up into this plane—to get from that prisoner’s hands into my hands.”

After he finished his paperwork, he took a little notebook out of his shirt pocket and started writing in it. His writing was nearly as tiny as the writing on that piece of tissue paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“My secret diary,” said Arafat. “I fill up a number of them every year. They tell about all my secret negotiations. Everything is recorded, so future generations will understand exactly what happened. It is my duty to do this, since I am a cadre of history.”

“I would love to read them,” I said.

“You are not the only one!” said Arafat.

“Do you keep them in a safe place?”

“I keep my diaries in many different safe places,” he replied.

“Did you have a nice day?” he went on. “They informed me you took your tour of the Old City.”

Arafat was more relaxed than I had yet seen him, or would see him again, so I decided the time had come to spring a little surprise of my own.

“Did they inform you I got you a present?” I asked.

“No,” said Arafat. “What is it?”

I signaled to the secretary, who went to the back of the plane and returned with “It Is Only Through Brotherhood That We Can Save Freedom.”

Arafat doesn’t know much French, but he figured it all out quickly. He passed it around to the others, and then gave it back to his secretary. I imagined some warehouse in Tunis or Baghdad filled with such mementos—objects he looks at once, then never thinks of again.

Arafat got up and went to the back of the plane. Just before he lay down to take his nap, he looked at me, winked, and said, “Did you get one for Shamir too?”

After Arafat was tucked in, the secretary took off his own socks and shoes, lay down on the floor, and, without a blanket, went to sleep. Hani Hassan also took off his shoes. Very softly, the secret pilot began to sing a Palestinian folk song.

“Do you see that city down there?” Arafat says as he gestures out the plane window. He is putting his bullets back in his revolver.

I nod, though this time not in surprise. More than three hours have passed since we flew off from Fès into the African night. This time it did not even occur to me to ask where we were going.

“That is Nouakchott, Mauritania,” says Arafat. “In a few minutes we will all be the guests of His Excellency, President Maaouya Ould Sidi Ahmed Taya.”

“Nouakchott!” I exclaim, and stop right there and then. The truth is, I have always dreamed of visiting Mauritania, one of the least-visited nations on earth. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let the chairman know that—not after my 6:45 A.M. wakeup call and three-and-a-half-hour walking tour through the Old City of Fès.

I try to review in my mind what I know about Mauritania, which is next to nothing. It’s a former French colony and the absolute back and beyond of the Arab world. It’s where North Africa shades into black Africa. Then I do remember something significant: it hasn’t rained in Mauritania in ten years.

“What’s Mauritania like?” I ask.

“You will see a lot of cricket,” says the secret pilot. An image of French-speaking blacks in white uniforms playing cricket on sand dunes floats through my mind as we land.

The only real similarity of the reception in Nouakchott to the reception the night before in Fès is the red carpet and the honor guard. But here the red carpet is a hundred yards long and the caped guards with swords are seven, not six, feet tall.

Otherwise, everything is different, even the air. It’s so hot not even Arafat tells people to bundle up as we get out of the plane. And while in Morocco everything was very ceremonial, here in Mauritania there’s naïve excitement: the world-famous Yasser Arafat has come to visit us!

President Maaouya Ould Sidi Ahmed Taya himself, along with his whole Cabinet and the diplomatic corps, is waiting at the steps of the plane. The local Palestinian community has also turned out en masse.

“Look!” says Arafat as the plane rolls to a stop. “Even here we have our Palestinian teachers, engineers, and doctors.”

The two national anthems are played. Arafat greets the president, Cabinet, and diplomatic corps. Some Palestinian children present him with flowers, and sing him a song. But I’m most fascinated by some elderly Mauritanian men in long, powder-blue robes.

Though they clearly are humble people, not dignitaries, they wander wherever they wish. They even walk right up to the president and Arafat. As they do this, they keep shouting at the top of their lungs.

The military attaché of the P.L.O. mission is detailed to take care of me, and as we dash to his car, so we can join the motorcade, he is gasping.

“I hear it went up to 110 degrees here today,” I say.

“It’s not the heat,” he says. “We only learned two hours ago that the chairman was coming.”

The official guesthouse looks like a trendy Italian motel lost in the desert. Arafat and the president go off together to confer, and three amiable young Mauritanians come up to me.

“Hello,” says one of them in French. “I’m the minister of foreign affairs.”

“What’s it like being foreign minister?” I ask.

“Well, I get to travel. But wherever I go, when I tell people I’m the minister of foreign affairs of Mauritania, they ask, ‘Where is it?’ Actually, I haven’t traveled much. I’ve only been foreign minister a month. That’s why I haven’t changed my cards yet.”

He hands me his card. On it he’s crossed out his old title and written in the new one.

“And what do you do?” I ask the second fellow.

“I’m the secretary of the Cabinet. I take care of the nuts and bolts of the nation’s administration.”

“And I’m the minister of information!” says the third guy. “Would you like to watch some TV?”

He turns on two televisions, one at each end of this very large, imperfectly air-conditioned modernesque room. The same Arabic soap opera plays on both of them.

“There doesn’t seem to be much up in Nouakchott” I remark. “I hear it hasn’t rained here in ten years.”

“Oh, it rained,” says the secretary of the Cabinet, rather resentfully.

“Yes,” says the foreign minister, “it rained about nine months ago.” He clearly is no friend of rain either.

“That is how we got our crickets,” explains the minister of information.

“Crickets?” I ask, only half remembering what the secret pilot said as we landed.

“Yes,” he says, “when it does not rain their larvae burrow underground.”

“And then when it finally does rain,” says the foreign minister, “they emerge by the billions and devour everything.”

I suddenly understand, and am both charmed and appalled. “You mean grasshoppers, locusts. You mean a plague of locusts, just like in the Bible.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” they exclaim. “Just like in the Koran.”

“But where are they?”

“Everywhere. Go outside and see!”

As soon as I go outside, I can see. It’s true. They are everywhere—clinging to bushes, covering lights, climbing up inside the capes of the seven-foot-tall honor guard. A grasshopper the size of a New York pigeon lands on my head, and sits there, though not for long, because one of those glinting swords flashes out and cuts it in half.

“Wow, I’ve never seen so many grasshoppers,” I say as I hurry back inside. “And so big!

“Oh, that’s nothing,” says the secretary of the Cabinet

“You see, at night the crickets sleep,” says the foreign minister.

“But in the day,” says the minister of information, “they fill the sky.”

“It’s really something to see them consume a tree,” says the foreign minister.

“Especially since we don’t have that many trees in Mauritania,” says the secretary of the Cabinet.

Dinner is canned peas and newly slaughtered lamb. The Arabic soap opera is left on while we eat, but suddenly it’s interrupted by a newsbreak. “Combatant Yasser Arafat, Supreme Leader of the Palestinian revolution, is in Nouakchott,” says the announcer. “He just arrived.” It was only twenty minutes ago, but there is the whole scene at the airport, up on the screen. Yasser Arafat has pre-empted Mauritanian prime-time TV.

“What’s the population of Mauritania?” I inquire as dessert is served.

“Getting on for two million,” says the minister of foreign affairs.

“One point eight million, to be exact,” says the minister of information.

“And how large is Mauritania?”

“Guess!” says the secretary of the Cabinet.

“Bigger than Texas?”

“Much bigger! Halfway between the size of Texas and the size of Alaska.”

“Only we have sand, not snow,” says the information minister.

“Yes,” says the foreign minister. “We are Palestinians-in-reverse. Lots and lots of land, more land than we know what to do with. But no people!”

“Well, at least we have our crickets,” says the information minister.

All this is considered very hilarious, and everyone at the table laughs and laughs and laughs. We are so jolly for another reason. There are bedrooms in this official guesthouse, and in the bedrooms are beds, and this reality has opened up whole new existential possibilities for us.

After we get some sleep, Dr. Shurafa and I have decided, we will go out and observe the crickets swarm by daylight. “This will be especially interesting for me, because I am an agricultural engineer,” he is saying when Abu Mazin returns to the table and says, “We’re leaving right now. The chairman has decided we must visit another country tonight.”

Our departure is like a videotape of our arrival played backward—the convoy, the dignitaries, the dash down the red carpet back onto the plane, while Arafat says good-bye to the president and the old men in the powder-blue robes walk around, raving at the top of their lungs.

“How long were we in Mauritania?” I ask as the plane door slams shut.

Arafat glances at his Rolex. “Two hours and eleven minutes,” he says. “My record time for an official visit is one hour and fifty-eight minutes—Italy. The prime minister came to the airport. We put out the communiqué just like that!”

He adds, “The president of Mauritania assured me he will support me in everything I am doing, including all the resolutions we passed at the P.N.C. in Algiers. Do you understand what that means? Though this is an Islamic republic, they are going right along with our recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and they will go along again, if we can make peace.”

Yasser Arafat has gained another card to play from this lightning raid. Mauritania may not be a superpower. But like every other country, it’s got one vote in the United Nations.

“I’m going to visit every one of the Arab states next week,” says Arafat, “except Syria. Then I’ll do all the African countries that have recognized our declaration of independence.”

These recognitions have been pouring in on the faxes ever since we left Tunis. As Arafat leafs through them he notices something, and motions to Abu Mazin.

“These Indian Ocean countries have all recognized us,” Arafat says. “So after Tanzania, let’s do them all—Seychelles, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Mauritius. Two days, four official visits.”

“O.K.,” Abu Mazin says. “I’ll fix it.”

“Is it always this bad?” I ask.

“This is easy,” answers Hani Hassan. “Recently we visited Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Pakistan, Thailand, China, Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Pakistan again, Saudi Arabia again, Iraq again, and then went back to Saudi Arabia for a third time—all in one trip.”

“How long did that take?”

“Three days, start to finish,” says Abu Mazin.

“Mauritania must be one of the most primitive nations on earth,” I remark as we taxi away from the red carpet.

“It is a nation of poets!” Arafat exclaims. “Didn’t you hear them chanting poems in our honor?”

“Up! Up! Up!” Arafat says, extending his palms and making lifting motions as the engines accelerate.

He cannot wait to get to the next stop.

Arafat’s real first name is Muhammad, not Yasser, which is a nickname he adopted in his youth, but Palestinians almost never refer to him as either “Yasser” or “Arafat.” When they talk to him in person, they call him “Abu Ammar,” which is his guerrilla code name. And behind his back, even when they are his age or older, they call him “the Old Man”—as though he were not so much a leader as a physical landmark, like the Old Man of the Mountain, in reference to which they orient their identities and lives.

Younger Palestinians, especially those educated in the U.S. and Britain, however, sometimes use an additional name.

“I really think Our Glorious Leader could take a fish and teach it to fly,” concluded a London-based Palestinian I met at the P.N.C. in Algiers.

By the end of the conference, Arafat had done something even more remarkable. He had convinced his fellow Palestinians that only by recognizing their adversaries’ right to a Jewish homeland could they ever hope to have a homeland of their own. But could he square the other side of the circle? Could he somehow get the Israelis to do the same in return?

“Definitely!” Arafat replied. “We are going to prove to the Israelis that a Palestinian homeland is in their interest—that we are offering them a solution to all the problems they face.”

“Prove it to me,” I said.

“No problem!” said Arafat. “First we are going to work out a peace settlement that will contain every conceivable condition necessary to guarantee Israel’s security. We will be making the Israelis offers they could not have imagined—offers no rational government could refuse.”

At this point Arafat pulled a one-page document, comprising six short paragraphs, out of his intifada file. The paragraphs were numbered.

“And then, at the same time we are offering peace, the intifada will be continuing! You see, there are six stages to the uprising, and we are now at stage four—partial strikes and disobedience. Then there is stage five, complete strike. And, finally, stage six.”

“What is stage six? Guerrilla warfare?”

“No!” said Arafat. “I have given the order for nonviolence. Stage six is complete disobedience—the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza rising up and taking every aspect of life into their own hands, creating their own independence.”

He added, “Usually it is called civil disobedience. But we are going to call it national disobedience, because that is how we are going to realize the independence we declared the other day.”

“Then what will happen?” I asked.

“The Israelis will understand what the rest of the world knows already. The greatest threat to Israel’s future isn’t a Palestinian state. It’s the refusal to let such a state be established—this insistence on continuing to rule a subject population that only wants to be free.”

“Everyone talks about a Palestinian confederation with Jordan,” I said. “Would you consider a confederation with Israel?”

“Why not?” he answered. “Look at the E.E.C. The youth of Europe are working peacefully together, not killing each other the way their fathers did.”

“You really think you can achieve something like that?”

“Sure,” said Arafat. “I am not a clown! I am a professional; I know how to do my job.”

“What’s that job?”

“I am going to get some little corner of this earth Palestinians can call their own. And,” said Arafat, “I am going to do it in a way that leaves everyone, including the Israelis, happy.”

Then Arafat said, “Bring me my honey!”

As I looked up, startled, a member of the three-man Tunisian flight crew came into the cabin carrying a jar of Langnese 100-percent-pure bees’ honey, imported from West Germany, along with a cardboard box of plastic spoons. After taking a spoonful of honey for himself, Arafat passed the jar around, and all the rest of us also took some—each with his separate plastic spoon, so as not to spread germs.

Arafat is health-conscious—a regular jogger who when he isn’t covering his head with a scarf, or napping under a heavy blanket, is warning those around him to bundle up. “Salt and sugar are the two poisons,” Arafat said as he took another spoonful of honey, with another spoon. The honey had made me thirsty. “May I have some water?” I asked. “You must be dehydrated,” Arafat said. “You should eat more fresh fruit.”

It is indisputable that Arafat in the past has personally authorized what, by any standard, are acts of terrorism.

Yet something else is indisputable: no one has done more to move the P.L.O. away from violence. His performance at the Palestine National Council—a kind of freewheeling parliament-in-exile whose members range from radical Marxists to Muslim fundamentalists—was a culmination of years of effort: first to keep the P.L.O. united even if it meant uniting with terrorists, and then to move it toward a democratic consensus on the need to make peace with Israel.

“Look at that,” said my London-based Palestinian acquaintance, laughing, as Arafat responded to criticism by members of the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is the main opposition within the P.L.O. to Arafat’s more moderate Fatah group.

“Some of these characters really were weaned on Kalashnikovs, and not long ago, if you dared to stand up in public and suggest Israelis had rights, they’d have pulled a gun on you. Somehow,” he went on, “the Old Man’s gotten them to follow parliamentary procedure. He’s gotten them to agree to abide by a majority vote.”

As Alain Ménargues, a French journalist who has interviewed Arafat many times, put it to me in Algiers, “The real question isn’t why Arafat is hated and reviled. It’s why so many people love and revere him.”

His friends include the King of Bhutan, billionaire international businessmen, poets, Catholic priests—and a growing circle of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. But the main reason Arafat commands so much loyalty is that tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Palestinians consider him not just their leader but a personal friend. In fact, there’s probably not a Palestinian anywhere who would be totally surprised to pick up the telephone and find Yasser Arafat calling.

While participating in the P.N.C. debate, Arafat did the following things almost simultaneously: whisper instructions to a military aide, who immediately saluted and dashed away; embrace a quite minor delegate, and ask by name about his wife, who had been sick; study and sign five separate official documents and pass them to the five separate officials concerned; shake hands with half a dozen foreign diplomats, greeting them by name too; and, when he noticed a photographer fifteen yards away was trying to get his attention, smile at the camera and wave.

How does such a man relax?

“I am not sure you’d call it relaxation,” said Bassam Abu Sharif, one of Arafat’s top aides, “but sometimes I find him darning his socks.”

“I love watching cartoons: Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, especially Tom and Jerry—it’s so much fun, the way the mouse outsmarts the cat,” Arafat himself told me. “But there’s almost no time for that anymore. I also like to ride horses, but I haven’t had time for that in years.” His pleasures are even simpler now.

“After the P.N.C.,” Hani Hassan told me, “the chairman was euphoric. ‘I feel so wonderful,’ he told me. ‘This morning I was able to take a few extra minutes and enjoy my bath.’ ”

Arafat is a nonsmoker who, even in a tiny airplane cabin, never asks those around him to put out their cigarettes. He is a teetotaler, some of whose closest aides keep bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label on their desks. He describes himself as a devout Muslim, and punctuates even his English with phrases like inshallah—“God willing.” But not once during our hegira did I see Arafat or any member of his entourage pray, as Islamic law commands the faithful to do five times daily. His closest advisers include agnostics, Lutherans—indeed virtually every stripe of personal conviction except Muslim fundamentalists and hard-line Marxists.

When I asked Arafat if the stories about his legendary temper tantrums were true, a definite gleam appeared in his eyes. “Yes!” Arafat said. “So be careful, or maybe it will happen to you.”

If I could meet Shamir or Sharon? I would say, ‘Can’t you see it’s a tragedy? Can’t you see we must stop the tragedy?’

“I would ask President Bush to do what is fair,” he says. “That is all.”

Arafat becomes more reflective, less rhetorical, the later it gets. Maybe it’s because he’s most comfortable after midnight. Or maybe it’s just that the fatigue is finally even getting to him. When he pulls off his kaffiyeh this time, I can see welts circling his head, made by the cords that hold it in place.

I’ve been asking him what he would say to those who consider him a pariah if they invited him for a ride on their airplane.

“To the American Jewish community? I would ask them to save the spirit of Judaism. I would say, ‘Think of the future of Judaism. Then do what you think best to ensure the future of Jewish values.’ ” He’s speaking almost indulgently now.

“You know, you’ve spoiled Israel,” he says. “You’ve turned it into a naughty baby. And what is the result of always saying yes, yes, yes to whatever the baby wants? You don’t need Yasser Arafat to tell you what Israel is turning into, politically and economically.”

He goes on: “So if you all think through those problems, and decide what is best for you, then I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll line up the P.L.O. and almost all the Arab governments for peace.”

Arafat’s self-confidence, even after all these hours, stuns me. “You really think you can end the entire forty-year conflict, just like that?”

“Oh, sure,” he says. “This is the last fifteen minutes. Of course, I could be wrong, but if so, no problem! The next Palestinian generation—all the new leaders the intifada is creating—will take up the task.”

“I simply cannot imagine the new Shamir government negotiating such a settlement,” I say.

“Oh, that religious coalition will never be formed,” Arafat replies. “Shamir will have no choice but to form another national coalition. Israel’s problems are just too big for a narrow-based government to take responsibility for.”

This was weeks and weeks before Israel’s new national coalition was actually formed. “How can you possibly know that?” I ask.

“Figuring out what is going to happen next in Israel is one of the biggest parts of my job,” Arafat answers.

“So you actually think that someday you will be president of an independent Palestine?”

Everyone in the plane, even the Tunisian flight crew, can’t stop laughing for a long time after he says that.

“Is the interview over?” Arafat asks. “Can I go back to work?”

But he doesn’t go right back to work.

He says, “You shouldn’t use a ballpoint to take notes. You should use a felt-tip pen. That way your arm wouldn’t hurt so much. Medical studies confirm it. The felt tip puts less strain on the muscles. That is why I always use them.”

“I would appreciate a couple of aspirin,” I say.

“Panadol is better,” Arafat says, and gets me some.

Then he asks, “Are you married?”

“No,” I answer.

“Why not?” he asks, and I suddenly realize the interview is not over.

“You laid yourself wide open for that one, Mr. Chairman. Why are you not married? You know everyone speculates about it.”

Arafat, almost imperceptibly, is discomfited.

“I tried to find a wife when I was young,” he answers, “but no one would agree to marry me. Then I took up my present work, and as it grew and grew and grew, I realized that if I married, I would need more than a wife. I would need a partner in this job. And who, possibly, could be that?”

I think that’s that, but he isn’t finished.

“This is a very difficult subject to speak about,” he says, “but I have these feelings”—for an instant, it does not seem he is going to finish the sentence—“but there is no time! There is never any time! You see how I live! You see all I have to do! And there never is enough time!”

“Have you always been a night person?” I ask.

“I am a day and night person!” he answers.

“Don’t you ever get jet lag?”

“I used to” is all he says, and goes back to work.

For years, Palestinians have been asking themselves the questions about Arafat the whole world asks now. What explains the evidently inexhaustible commitment and energy of this fifty-nine-year-old man? Why is he so circumspect about his youth and family? Why does he have no real personal life—no favorite residence, no valued personal possessions, no wife?

There are tales of a great unrequited passion—of a woman jilting him during his Kuwait days. Arafat also had at least two serious affairs while living in Lebanon, according to Palestinians who worked with him at the time. Nada Yashruti was the young widow of a fellow engineer who had been killed in a construction accident. “That was a real love story,” a Palestinian now living in the U.S. told me. “Then, in 1972, she was assassinated. It must have been done by people determined to hurt the chairman deeply.”

His relationship with Aliya al-Sulh, daughter of Lebanon’s first prime minister, my source said, “was more complex, both romantic and political. It lasted for years, but we could tell the political side had become more important when, instead of going alone at night to her house, the chairman would arrive with various officials and staff.”

Certainly there is ample documentation, covering decades, that long before that Arafat had subsumed his whole life, not just his fortune and honor, into the cause that, ever since he was a teenager, he has never doubted is both just and bound to succeed, whatever others may think of it or him.

“His much-pondered personal life?” said my London Palestinian acquaintance. “It does not exist. I’ve traveled with him. I’ve observed him very closely, with great curiosity, and I can tell you there is no space and no time for a personal life. In the life of Yasser Arafat,” he said, “there is not even a moment or a place to wank.”

The next mystery destination turns out to be unmysterious. It’s the same Fès airport from which we took off for Mauritania less than nine hours earlier.

Only this time there’s no red carpet, no honor guard, no welcoming committee—just a single plane sitting on the tarmac, door wide open, while it’s being refueled.

“I wanted to take you to a completely different African country tonight,” Arafat says, “but they wouldn’t let me.”

I learn later that, after leaving Nouakchott, Arafat wanted to fly across the entire continent of Africa to Cairo. But the others persuaded him to go to Algiers instead on the ground that it was more important to arrange for the burial of a senior colleague who had died suddenly the day before.

When we reach Fès, I desperately need to leave the plane because all that baggage still fills the lavatory. Arafat glances up from his work as I head for the door.

“Don’t try to escape,” he says cheerily. “Remember, you are still my hostage.”

“Why did you ask if I was married?” I say from the door.

“Oh, I thought we might find you a wife—a good Christian Palestinian wife. That is all.”

In the terminal, Dr. Shurafa is using the adjoining urinal in the bathroom normally reserved for chiefs of state. It’s all black marble and gold fixtures.

“Did you persuade him to go to Algiers because you’re all so tired?” I ask.

“No,” he answers, “arranging this burial really was the more important priority. You know how we always say we need a homeland so we can have someplace where we can bury our dead? Well, it’s true,” he says. “Of course, you can bury a body anywhere. It’s the political problems these burials create. This man happened to die in Algeria, but he was based in Syria. Our relations with Syria are already terrible, and if we simply bury him in Algiers the Syrians will be able to interpret this as an additional slight. On the other hand, we also have to consider the Algerians. So it is an important decision, and it must be made immediately, because the feelings of the family must be considered too.”

The people around Arafat seem to have absorbed some of his confidence and imperviousness to danger, fatigue, and personal abuse.

“We know we are talented, successful people,” Dr. Shurafa tells me as we scurry back to the plane. “This is not a revolution of the hungry. It is a revolution made by people who understand that simply having enough food is not enough.”

“Do you ever get angry,” I ask, “because of all you have to go through?”

“Who would we get angry at?” he replies. “No one has forced us to do all this. The only people we would have a right to be angry at would be ourselves. We were all so young and rich when we founded Fatah,” he adds. “We could have done anything, lived anywhere. And yet we chose to do this,” he says proudly.

For just an instant I see, in the face of this haggard subordinate, the serenity that Arafat, beneath his ceaseless motions and maneuvers, seems to have all the time.

When we get back to the plane, Arafat is sleeping—really sleeping, not napping as he did before. I can tell this because when we circle Algiers just before dawn, I can see him sitting up. I can see he’s disoriented, coming out of a deep sleep. He sits there for several minutes, putting his mind back together. Then when we land, he goes straight to work.

As I look out the window of the V.I.P. lounge at Algiers that afternoon, I can tell my time with Arafat is about to end. A somewhat larger Iraqi jet now sits next to the little Tunisian jet on the tarmac. Men are moving fax machines from one plane to the other.

“That’s how he keeps up the pace,” says Abu Mazin. “As soon as he exhausts one plane and team of advisers, he immediately shifts to another.”

Arafat is peeling other tangerines now, I think as I look out the window. Or at least he was the last time I saw him. When I turn around, Arafat is gone. The engines of the Iraqi jet are running, and some people I don’t recognize are racing to get onboard.

He’s out of here! I think. And then: I should have said good-bye.

But then an aide taps me on the shoulder, and I see Arafat is not gone after all. He just went to get something. It’s a small cardboard package.

“You get a gift too,” says Arafat when I walk over.

Inside the cardboard box he gives me are two things: his calling card and a large mother-of-pearl Nativity scene. The Madonna, the babe in the cradle, the shepherds, and the angels are all white mother-of-pearl. They sit inside a green-and-black abalone grotto. This object is every bit as kitschy as the one I gave him.

“They only make these in Jerusalem,” Arafat says. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Initially, I regarded this trip as a chance to ask Arafat many questions. Then I realized his specific answers were secondary to the opportunity to observe how he actually works and lives.

Only later did I decide the trip contained an even more important revelation. It was all those takeoffs, all those landings, all that frenzied travel. It was the exhausting realization, far more exhausting than lack of sleep, that wherever we went next, it wouldn’t be home. For the first time in my life, I sensed what it must be like to be a man without a country.

It was the same with the contents of the cardboard box he gave me. The most important clue to Arafat didn’t lie in the Nativity scene, but in the card he enclosed with it.

It was a very strange calling card, because all that was printed on it were two words: “Yasser Arafat.” Nothing else—no telephone or apartment number, no street name, no Zip Code or city.

And that, I think, reveals what drives him, what has driven him ever since he shook off his “total despair” and started flying. Yasser Arafat is a man ready to try anything, absolutely anything, if only it offers some chance, some way, some day, to get what all the Palestinians lost so long ago, which is a home address.